"It's some other ship outside!" I cried. "And they're trying to get in-they're boarding us!"
"The top space-door!" Jhul Din shouted. "They're getting in there!" For the clang of the door opening came to our ears at that moment and a flood of cold air from outside rushed through the cruiser.
"Up to the space-door, then!" I yelled. "Hold it against them, whoever they are!"
As we cried out we were bursting out of the pilot room, bumping against walls and doors in the unrelieved darkness, rushing toward the corridor into which that upper space-door opened. I heard the shouts of the crew as they too blindly hastened upward, and then as I burst into the corridor I sought I collided squarely in the darkness with something. Something that was tall and bulky and that felt like cold flesh to my touch. Instantly two great flap-like limbs or arms from it were grasping me.
I struck out in the dark with sudden frenzied horror, but as I knocked the unearthly thing from me others were about me, pouring down into the corridor from the space-door above, from outside the ship. They were all about us, in groups, scores, gripping me and Korus Kan and Jhul Din and all our crew, while we struck out blindly against them.
* * *
I have fought the dread serpent-creatures in the hall of the living dead, and I have had a part in the tremendous combat of three universes, but never yet did I take part in a more terrible struggle than that one. For it was a struggle in a darkness so absolute that we could have no slightest glimpse of the creatures we fought, knowing by touch only that they were things such as we had never come into contact with before.
They were calling in flute-like tones to one another as their powerful flap-arms caught and held us, tones oddly incongruous with the wild uproar of the battle. They seemed to move as easily in the utter darkness as we might do in light, and this fact gave them a tremendous advantage over us. Because of that our wild struggle had in moments been quelled, and as I was held tightly by two of the things I heard the calls of my friends to me and realized that all of us had been overpowered. These creatures of darkness had captured our ship!
Still holding us, they herded us toward one end of the corridor, and then released us. Amazed, I took a step through the darkness toward one of the corridor's doors. But in an instant I had halted, for through the darkness a buzzing sound came to me and at the same time fiery, tearing pain ran through every nerve in my body. I staggered back, and the buzzing ceasing, the pain ended. Jhul Din and Korus Kan, who had thought to escape also in the darkness, had experienced the same thing, staggering back with me.
It was evident that our strange captors were aware in some way of every move we made in the darkness, and that the buzzing was of some pain-producing weapon of theirs. Later we were to learn that it was one that set up electrical pain-currents in the nervous system. Pain is but a sensation or electrical current in a certain nerve, and this strange weapon was one that by induction set up pain-currents of more or less intensity in every nerve in the body.